RECORDS REVEAL: 1.5 Years After Hurricane Maria, FEMA Had Sent Only $3.3 Billion To Puerto Rico GOV

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text: This needs to be a major story: newly obtained documents reveal that in the year and a half following Hurricane Maria, FEMA only sent $3.3 billion, calling into question Trump’s claim at the time that Puerto Rico had received $91 billion in federal aid.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/records-reveal-1-5-years-after-hurricane-maria-fema-had-sent-only-3-3-billion-to-puerto-rican-govt/

Newly obtained documents reveal that in the year and a half following Hurricane Maria, which caused an estimated $90 billion of damage in Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency only sent $3.3 billion in federal disaster aid to local authorities in the U.S. territory. Not only do these records undercut Trump’s claim at the time that Puerto Rico had received $91 billion in federal aid, but they make Trump’s new $13 billion FEMA aid package for Puerto Rico look even more politically motivated.

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, killing around 3,000 people and destroying the islands’ electrical system. A year and a half later, in April 2019, Trump tweeted that “Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before & all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money.” It was clear at the time that Trump’s number was incorrect, so CREW requested records from FEMA to see how much money had actually been allocated and granted to local authorities by the agency for disaster relief in Puerto Rico.

While these records are not a full accounting of the entire federal government’s disaster aid to the territory, they show that much of the $15 billion obligated by FEMA had not actually been spent.

What we do know is that by April 10, 2019, when CREW sent the request, FEMA had granted only $3.3 billion in disaster relief to the government of Puerto Rico, or just over 59% of obligated public assistance funds, the FEMA documents reveal. The agency had also delivered none of the $16 million obligated toward hazard mitigation.

*snip*

[crickets]

1. K&R for visibility.